Eyeball Kicks: A Teen-Age-Girl Summer

“We spent a lot of time spying on kids, wherever we would find them,” Mariko and Jillian Tamaki, the authors of the graphic novel “This One Summer,” said about the research process for their book. It will be released next week, just in time for summer reading.

“I’m a huge fan of talk, and am a chronic eavesdropper,” Mariko confided. She provided the script and worked closely with her cousin Jillian, the artist. “I love riding the subway or sitting in malls listening to people gossip or argue on the phone. Mostly, when I eavesdrop in schools, I hear a lot of girls talking about other people, which I’m sure was a big influence on the plot of this book. And we updated it from what I remembered of being twelve, so, for example, ‘Kidding!’ is a big one in this book, a version of ‘Not!’ from our youth. And we used ‘slut,’ while I remember girls were more ‘skanks’ and ‘hos’ than ‘sluts’ in my day.”

The book is fictional but weaves in many reminiscences from the summers Mariko spent as a kid at a cottage in Northern Ontario: “It was my favorite place in the world. Both crushingly boring and adventurous. I have a mental rolodex of kid stuff I like to pull out: everything from MASH to the different card games we played to smelly markers and gummi bracelets. I still love that stuff. I still buy it. I still think it’s possible to end up in a mansion instead of an apartment because of the number six.”

Jillian, the artist, who grew up in Western Canada, says she did “extensive research. It was really important to infuse the sensory elements into the story. My job is to make things specific and visceral. I take notes and keep an ear out whenever I am near kids to pick up the tics and nuances, but one thing I really took away from this exercise is how loud they are.”